At length he was condemned, and the religious world shuddered
at the thought of seeing the pile lighted by a champion of the Reformation
and religious freedom. Loud and awful shrieks were heard in the prison
when the tidings of his sentence were conveyed to Servetus. Soon the fatal
staff was broken over his head as a sign of his condemnation, and on the
Champel Hill, outside the gates of Geneva, the last tragic scene took
place. With his brow adorned with a crown of straw sprinkled with
brimstone, his Fatal Books at his side, chained to a low seat, and
surrounded by piles of blazing faggots, the newness and moisture of which
added greatly to his torture, in piteous agony Servetus breathed his last,
a sad spectacle of crime wrought in religion's name, a fearful example of
how great woes an author may bring upon himself by his arrogance and self-
sufficiency. The errors of Servetus were deplorable, but the vindictive
cruelty of his foes creates sympathy for the victim of their rage, and
Calvin's memory is ever stained by his base conduct to his former friend.
The name of Sebastian Edzardt is not so well known. He was educated at
Wuertemberg, and when Frederick I. of Prussia conceived the desire of
uniting the various reformed bodies with the Lutherans, he published a
work _De causis et natura unionis_, and a treatise _Ad Calvanianorum
Pelagianisinum_. In this book he charged the Calvinists with the Pelagian
heresy--a charge which they were accustomed to bring against the
Lutherans.
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